Call of the Child
by Servant of Fire
Summary: Inspired by Blood Diamond: When T'challa and Shuri present the white man they've healed, the Queen mother remembers the man who saved her son. A burning church, 24 years, sorrow and war and madness and greatness has brought them all together again. Had they saved each other?


**Call of the Child:**

It was all smiles. There was a ceremony today. Everyone in traditional attire. Even Shuri, who hated it.

The prince and princess brought their new friend into the ceremony field. Children swarmed him, sometimes leading him by the hand. He was still dressed like a soldier. Eyes still haunted by his winter that had barely had a chance to thaw.

The Queen mother stood up from her seat on the pavilion. Her heart had turned to stone. His eyes, his haggardness. The feral man they had saved had saved her once.

Sergeant Barnes looked up. His eyes met the Queen's eyes. His face gained color as fear and the memory of fire reanimated him. His soul was darkness but the ferocity of a mother's love and eternal gratitude could not be denied. She knew him, and he knew her. He had saved her once.

What was more, he'd saved her son.

 _Sierra Leone, circa 1994._

James had hit his head just hard enough. James...The name sounded odd between his teeth, his numbed tongue. But the blast that lit the church on fire, had called out to him, yawned to him. The impact had jarred his name up from the eternal torment of a bleached mind. It had set his soul to blazes, just as it did the church.

He remembered it all now. A choir singing. African children, ebony skin offsetting their ivory white robes. Holy, holy, holy. No place for an angel of death like him. Dear God, the music had distracted him. He had not pulled the trigger on the target, a man with a bomb pack coming to take Hydra's prize.

James stood up, disoriented. Blood dripped from one of his eyes. He'd hit his face hard enough to fracture his cheek. The pain barely touched him. Something else had sent a shock through his body. Something else had called out to a man who was dead inside of him.

"T'challa! T'challa!" A woman, a frantic woman. A voice calling out a name. A boy's name.

James forgot that he'd been caught in between a diamond war in Sierra Leone and innocent people. He forgot that Hydra had him here, killing off anyone who got too close to their vibranium leads. He forgot the blood and the death and children made to carry machine guns.

He'd heard a mother shouting a boy's name and his heart shrieked inside him, like Abel's blood crying out for justice from the ground. At that moment, a tiny fragment of thought slipped smoke-like through the fracture breaks in the bones of his face.

"Steve…"It was only a name. Not a memory, not something real. Certainly not the rocket fuel that propelled him to respond. He tore through the forest, lashed by the branches. Baboons screamed at him, angry that their home had been disrupted by the blazes. He ignored their charging, how they bounced like missiles through the trees.

"My son! My son!" A royally-dressed guard held the thrashing woman back.

"Your son, my lady, is dead." The voice was broken.

"No!" The woman's wail, rising above the reality of war, was enough. James was blind to all his reason. His training melted like the last stronghold of ice that made him the Winter Soldier.

"Steve!" He shouted, and ran, following the mother's eyes, the direction of her pointing fingers.

The church. Holy, holy, holy. He must reach the church. The choir shrieked when once they'd sang. A single, sweet song rose alone now from the place of fear. The leader lady trying to calm the children and fill the terrible ending with peace. A church on fire. Holy, holy, holy and perish the world.

One thought rose from the ashes. A plume of smoke, a trick of the brain. A child, too small and fragile and sick. Holy, holy, holy the lamb this living sacrifice was for.

"Steve!" James called out as he dove head first through a blazing door, robot arm ripping away the thin smoky veil that kept passion from its bride.

Not James. With the memory of a frail but feisty blonde child, there returned a name. His name. His real name. The one that love and family had given him.

"Bucky…My name...My name!"Bucky whispered it like a mantra as he tore through burning walls.

"Okoye! Help! Okoye!" A female child screamed, hands outstretched to the choir-leader. Okoye closed the book she sang from, hand grasping for a spear.

"This was a mission of peace…"Okoye's eyes were filled with smoky tears. Bucky raised his hands.

"I can get you out of here." Bucky stumbled over the English words. So long, so long ago he'd forgotten his native tongue. Even now a bit of Russian accent twists them in his lips. His name, his name! He hears it spoken by the blonde child whose ghost has come to help him. He can do this.

"Oh! Oh! Right. Bring the queen's son. The queen's son first." Okoye held her arms out. A little boy was pushed to the front, frightened and yet calm. Bucky made a note that it was like looking into the eyes of a lion and seeing all his grace and strength before he was grown.

They lifted the child to Bucky's shoulders. And in the eye of Bucky's mind, the beautiful dark of this child turned to the gentle pale of his lamb. The lamb of his sacrifice. The reason he died and went to Hell so many years ago.

"Steve…"Bucky whispered, voice hoarse in all the smoke. Steve. His Steve.

"Come on! I tore a path. Stay close to me and we'll all make it.

He tore through the walls. Fire caught in his flesh hand's glove. Fire turned the metal hand cherry hot but did not melt it. It was too strong and as lasting as bondage for that.

Every child was delivered from the blazing matrix of the broken church's belly. Bells cracked in the fire. The children now were singing to keep calm. Salvation was almost in sight. Holy, holy, holy, this day was nearly done.

"T'Challa!" The woman tore free and ran. Ran to the children who escaped, coughing and crying, singing with cracked voices like doves cast out of the whirlwind. Okoye hit her knees and raised her hands in praise.

Bucky reluctantly handed the child to his mother. He transformed from Steve's pale to T'Challa's dark again. Oh, but Bucky no longer feared the dark. It was the boy who'd saved him. For he had saved him, not the other way around.

 _Back to the present._

"After all these years. It's you." The Queen had a hand to her throat. T'Challa had been walking beside Bucky. He froze. Shuri was skipping along on Bucky's other hand. She found her voice first.

"Mother? You...You know this guy?" Shuri looked at Bucky with new curiosity.

"I thought...I thought you were familiar." T'Challa clenched his fist. So tightly the Black Panther suit's claws clicked and sparked. Bucky felt tiny surrounded by their eyes.

Shuri let out a gasp.

"You...The man from the burning church... That story is almost a legend!" Shuri was smiling.

"Yes, Shuri...The man from the burning church." The Queen stepped closer and cupped his face in her hand.

"White-Wolf...I wondered when I'd see you again." She smiled.

Bucky smiled. Holy, holy, holy. Salvation had found him.


End file.
